Olio Coin Bank with Clock Needs T.P. for Its Bunghole
Posted by Addy Dugdale at 9:57 PM on August 24, 2007
I would not like to meet the weirdo who designed this Olio coin bank-cum*-clock in a club—he probably uses his to keep his Rohypnols dry. $21.95, from Wrappables this is the chocolate teapot, the bone china stiletto or the USB thong of the gadget world. [Wrappables via 7Gadgets]
*Huhuhuhuh, she said "cum."

This is the Benefield Anechoic Facility in Edwards Air Force Base: the largest chamber of its kind in the world —a room in which RF and sound signals don't bounce off the walls, so you can get clean radio frequency testing on all kinds of gear. In this case, electronic warfare systems in huge toys like Hercules, B-1B and B-2 bombers, Raptor fighters and all kind of airplanes.



We've already covered
Following on last year's P2, the new Viliv X2 AIO comes with absolutely everything on a tight 4.3-inch screen package: movie, music and picture playback with picture in picture capabilities, digital TV tuner, GPS and electronic dictionary, which would be great if you live in Korea, where it's going to be launched.
The Travelsound i50 is a portable speaker for the iPod Shuffle from Creative Japan. Attach it to your Shuffle and suddenly you've got what looks like a very cool, very Vegas-baby, retro-style Ronson cigarette lighter that plays your tunes.
Consisting of two satellite towers and a downward-firing amplified subwoofer, these red LED-illuminated Rosetta speakers from Britz have been designed with computer or gaming set-ups in mind. Featuring IHSS (Indeptendent Harmonic Surround Sound), they are probably a bit too weedy for hardcore gamers. If you ask me, both towers and sub look like the kind of vase you'd find in a funeral home.
Someone in the Netherlands transformed a water tower into a cool vertical apartment. The results are amazing and the spiral stairs are guaranteed to keep you fit and/or drive you mad with 



Captain Ødegård created this Creative Zen Stone out of pine, although he seems to have accidentally scaled up the dimensions to a huge 8.25" x 5.5" x 2". Check out a video of it in use after the jump.
The iSpin is a mixer that uses two docked iPods as inputs, and provides a range of effects like reverb, flange, hi/low pass filter and scratching sounds. While this would be fine for some DJs, it won't suit everyone because you can't beat-match with it.
For a $232 price tag, this Japan-only Wizz CSDP-500 portable multimedia player and matching CLCD-507 7-inch LCD dual screens looks like a good option for video-on-the-go fans. The $86 40-ounce CSDP-500 plays DVDs of all kinds as well as video, music and picture files in MPEG-4,MP3,WMA and JPEG formats using it's built-in USB port, SD or Memory Stick slot in the 480×234 pixel screens with built-in 1.5W speakers. [
Artist Frank Boelter has constructed a 9-metre paper boat from the stuff used to make Tetrabrik packs and is sailing it up the Elbe. The 37-year old artist came up with the idea one breakfast time, while he was sitting at his kitchen table fiddling with an empty milk carton, which he cut up and made into a scaled-down model. See how they built it after the jump.
Epson has debuted its new color scanner. Aimed at amateur photo freaks in a hurry, the V500 cuts warm-up time and scanning time, meaning you can get through a pile of negs, slides and photos in less time than other scanners, thanks to its ReadyScan LED technology.
Our colleague over at Prime Diary has hipped us to a pair of Transformers hand fans that serve a purpose while upping your geek-cred. Painted as either Optimus Prime or Megatron, each fan has a removable top revealing a soft fan blade that offers instant cool when you and your Autobots roll out. Judging from the box art, it not only looks like a Japan exclusive, but comes in Ultraman, Spiderman, Batman and Superman flavors as well. More pics can be found at 




I got to play with DivX's Connected set top box that 













When we're sending naked pictures of ourselves to people we've never met, we want the process to go as quick as possible. Industrial Facility and luckybite -- two UK Design firms -- know that, and have teamed up with Madori Kuroda, Panasonic Japan's Chief mobile device designer, to create a prototype phone dock called the Panasonic Pixi.
We've all watched Fight Club and wished that Brad Pitt's rippling biceps would be a bit more, well, 3D....right? Either way, Mitsubishi is releasing 3D Blu-ray players that will be able to make any 2D movie 3-dimensional. Before you get too excited, just know that you'll still have to be wearing 3D glasses (hip-looking, 80's-styled 3D glasses) to get the full viewing experience. 
Finally, graffiti and technology have joined to create something beautiful. Mark Ecko is designing digital citylights that will consist of a giant LCD screen and a Bluetooth interface that will allow passerby's to "spray graffiti" by accessing the screen via Bluetooth. They will then be able to use their cell phone cursor to spray any phallic object and/or clever curse words they can think of.
Despite what the floor salesmen at Best Buy tell you about Plasmas vs. LCDs, LCD TVs actually do get burn-in. Sure, it takes longer to make that "Fox News" logo locked into your TV even when you're watching, say, The Venture Bros., but it'll get there. As you can see in this 22-inch Sharp LCD at Bic Camera in Japan, the "0" in the 1980 yen appears even when the number doesn't. We just wish the guys who took this picture knew how to use a camera correctly.
There are two reasons to watch this Fall's remake of The Bionic Woman on NBC. One is Michelle Ryan, English actress and utter, utter hottie. The other is Katee Sackoff, Battlestar Galactica's chewer-upper of Cylon raiders —but we all know about her hotness already, so let's focus on the new girl. There's a video preview of the series and a poll about her after the jump.
Ben Heck, everyone's favorite video-game modder, has gone and done it again. This time, he's gone and stuffed an Atari AND an NES into a handheld portable, and dubbed it the NEStari. As usual, he goes through plenty of detail showing how he did it, and as usual, it's way too complicated for 99% of us to attempt on our own. [
We've been lucky enough not to be carried in a stretcher, but if we're going to be, we'd want it to be in one of these. This design for a Caterpillar stretcher looks standard at first, but can tilt up to a reclining or sitting wheelchair and glide gracefully up and down stairs. This lets the paramedics easily carry you down elevator-less buildings without risking breaking your body even more. Still not designed for the morbidly obese, however. [
In a blatant example of downright-lazy journalism, the Wall Street Journal has just discovered the fact that, OH NOES, there is slang coming from the internet! And kids are using it irl (that's "in real life," for you WSJ writers).
Here's another spin on that countdown clock idea, but this one takes more of a Hollywood movie star approach. Decide your goal from among the few printed strips of paper included (or go ahead and make your own), slide that goal into the slot on the front of this clock, enter the day and year of your big special occasion, and you're off and counting.
Venzero's black-sheened players have always looked good, which is why the Venzero Linq looks so promising. Besides having the standard MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, OGG, JPEG and MPEG4 playback, it also supports Wi-Fi streaming from internet radio stations and your Windows Media Player 11 on a PC. That means you don't need to jam-pack its 4GB of memory with songs if you're at home—you can just stream your entire library over wireless. But if you do want portable storage, there's an extra 2GB microSD slot for a total of 6GB of memory. Available at the end of September. [
Similar to the way that the power cables on the original Xbox had problems with possibly catching on fire, the Xbox 360 Racing Wheel can possibly cause your wheel to "overheat" and "release smoke." Thanks to a couple instances of this happening, Microsoft is instituting a program where you can get an AC adapter replacement for your wheel free of charge.
When a couple of Swiss kids on holiday in Hungary found a circular object by a river, they did the logical thing and started playing Frisbee with it. They were gob-smacked to learn, however, that their toy was, in fact, a Soviet anti-tank landmine.
Those of you who have managed to brick or accidentally upgrade your PSP have been looking for this Pandora's Battery software even if you didn't realize it. The app lets you turn any battery into an official Sony Jigkick battery, which is what their repair staff uses to unbrick (and also downgrade) your PSP. Best of all, any homebrew-enabled PSP can do this, so you can just find a buddy with a working handheld to do this to your battery so you can fix your own PSP afterwards. [
This Plantronics Calisto Pro set takes your standard Bluetooth headset and adds in landline and Skype dialing, which means you get the big three (Skype, home, cell) all in one dorky-looking device. The base station has a USB connector to hook into your PC for Skype and Yahoo calls, a DECT 6.0 handset to handle landline calls, and the headset to connect to both these plus a cellphone. The price for all this convenience while you work at home in your underpants? $279 starting September. [
The title of world's tallest LEGO tower just
The headsets that come for free with the Xbox 360 don't exactly scream quality. Sure, they get the job done when it comes to trash talking the 11-year-olds you're losing to in Shadowrun, but the one-eared design that makes you listen to both the TV and your headset isn't really an optimal solution. The new Ear Force X3 is a full set of headphones with a high-quality mic attached. It gives you the benefit of spatial sound, so you can hear those middle school jerks sneaking up on you before they pop you with a headshot. Boy, isn't gaming fun? [
Olympus, trying to set a record for the number of cameras introduced in one day, also updated its Stylus line of point-and-shoot cameras with three colorful new models, the 820, 830 and 1200. All of them have what Olympus calls an "all weather" body, image stabilization, shadow adjustment goodness, and now they all have face detection to help you focus on what's really important.









The 4000 DPI resolution and 100 inches per second tracking speed of this Razer 3G Laser Sensor will probably give you as much of an advantage in BioShock as you're going to get, short of injecting yourself with a "Not-Suck-At-FPS" Plasmid. At 4000DPI, the imaging is so good you could hold it up to your chest and it'll tell you if you have emphysema. Besides these features, it's also got 32kb of onboard memory, 1000Hz Ultrapolling, 1ms response, an "Always-On" mode, a gold-plated USB connector, but doesn't have interchangeable weights like the
Although the Japanese often improve on many of our gadgets, replacing the dirt in an ant farm with a nutrient-rich gel doesn't quite work as well as you'd think. Instead of digging tunnels and generally surviving, the gel ants in this Antquarium live only a short time by feeding on the dead flesh of their brothers and sisters. Great if you're trying to find who the most survival-worthy ant is, lousy if you're trying to keep them as pets. [
As if we weren't sick and tired enough of the whole diamond-encrusted solid gold bling craze that's going on right now, this Widex diamond-encrusted solid 24-carat gold hearing aid beats all, giving new meaning to the term "golden ears." You know, we don't even like to use the word "bling." Shit, now we've used it again. Anyway, apparently the proprietors of such a product optimistically hope that hearing-impaired people can be deaf and literally dumb, too.
Matt Tovey made this really slick table using 434 Itanium CPUs on the way to the trash can. Rather than waste some perfectly good hardware (list price as of last year for all those chips: over $800,000), he made a striking and unique desk for himself. Check out his detailed step-by-step, with plenty of photos, over at his blog. Nice work, Matt. I'll take two. [
Oh boy, the format war sure is heating up! Isn't in so fun?! 